Angry Tree, part deux

Heather asked how cold it was. I could make something fantastic up and say that it was -25 and there was a blizzard a foot, but I can't lie this close to Christmas. The weather has been amazing and very Texas familiar. God has been very kind when we move, he changes the weather to help us acclimate better. It snowed on Christmas Eve the first year we were in Houston. And the weather has been very friendly to us now that we are back in Wyoming. So the weather was probably in the mid to high 30's. It's a different, dry cold. Not the sink to your bones wet cold that you get near the Gulf. So anyway back to the tree... The ride home was fairly uneventful. As uneventful as you can get with 7 kids, 2 grown ups, the *not broken* dog, and a tree tied to the roof of the family vehicle. We got home and got the tree off the roof and were pleased to find that the height we needed was exactly what we had chosen. No we didn't pre-measure. Come to find out our ceilings are almost 8 feet the tree was 7 1/2. We sawed off some of the lower branches and stuffed this 15 year old tree into our nice big sturdy tree stand. We filled the bottom with water and proceeded to decorate. Lights and all the old ornaments, and the little snowmen with the dangling mittens. And the snowmen heads with the bells for bottoms, so cute. These are the ones my mom-in-law sent us over the years. Anyway we got the tree decorated. And while it was pretty, it was still thin, and a tiny bit Charlie Brownish. So the next day I decided it needed some tinsel/icicles to fill in the holes. I used to love that stuff, but it's only fun to pull it out of a cat or child's throat just so many times, then it gets old. I must have felt pretty desperate to have to resort back to tinsel. I was a little upset after buying the tinsel and a few other things from a local store (of which I refuse to name because they are so over priced there,(most of the time), I get angry when I shop and refuse to give them any credit or recognition.) Tinsel in a package of 1000 strands at Wal-mart costs 50 cents. I paid $1.09, this was on sale from $1.99. And that wasn't all. We also needed more lights for our roof. So I paid $8 something, also on sale. I came home upset and then Jason went to go run an errand and took the lights with him just in case he found some cheaper some where else, he did. $4 thank you Ace Hardware. Anyhoodle, while he was gone the tree and I got into a fight. It started to lean a little and so I tried to straighten it out a little. And it fell on me. I have never EVER had a Christmas tree fall, let alone fall ON me. So I put it back up and tightened the screws in the base. This wasn't going to work. With the tree being so fresh it had soaked up all the water we had put in the base. The bark was sopping wet and had turned into mush, the screws had nothing to dig into. So what is the first thing that comes to my mind? Duct tape. It fixes everything. I put the tree back on the ground ornaments and all, actually I don't know if I put it there or if it put itself there, and proceeded to wrap duct tape around the trunk of the tree to give the screws something to grip into. I then put the now half decorated tree back up into the stand. I was irritated. And the lights were falling off. The only logical(hormonally logical) solution was to un-decorate the tree. So I started pulling the lights off. Spencer was trying to help. It wasn't really working, and just to prove that I wasn't the only irritated thing around, the tree fell again. That was all I needed. So I grabbed it, drug it through the house and threw it out the front door... and there it STOOD, yep, stood in its smug little manner. If trees had mouths it would have been smirking. Now there is a story, kind of a legend really, to anyone who grew up around Shumway's. It has to do with children being in trouble and a tree being vaulted out of the house, but that story belongs to Christin and if she chooses to tell it that's up to her. But we have heard it in my house and so when Jason came home he thought for sure the kids were up a creek in trouble, and that he would enter to find me a raving lunatic. He was relieved to find that I wasn't having any trouble with the kids, just the stupid @*&%#$#@ tree. He fixed it by screwing pieces of 2x4's into the trunk and wedging it into the base. Needless to say it'd probably stand until July if we let it. So I redecorated, with the help of super-glue of course, to glue the little bells back on the bottoms of the snowman heads that had broken on their jaunt through the house.
I typically have great reverence, respect and admiration for the trees we get to help us celebrate Christmas. I admire their beauty, being lighted and decorated with love, care and tradition. I'm always a little sad for the life of the tree that was shortened. BUT when I look at this tree, all I can think is how much I'm going to enjoy using it for firewood.

Good day to ya.